Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 10 LES HEURES DU JOUR

 

LES HEURES DU JOUR

 

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 9 L'ADDIO

 

HAYDN 2032 - No. 9 L'ADDIO

 

Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini HAYDN Die Schöpfung

DIE SCHÖPFUNG

 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico WHAT'S NEXT VIVALDI?

WHAT'S NEXT VIVALDI?

Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini LA MORTE DELLA RAGIONE

LA MORTE DELLA RAGIONE

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini BEETHOVEN The 9 Symphonies

THE 9 SYMPHONIES

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 8 LA ROXOLANA

HAYDN 2032 - No. 8 LA ROXOLANA

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico VIVALDI Concerti per Flauto

                                                       CONCERTI PER FLAUTO

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No.8 - LA ROXOLANA

                                                HAYDN 2032 - No.8 - LA ROXOLANA

Cecilia Bartoli / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini FARINELLI

Renowned for portraying the music of the baroque like no one else, Cecilia Bartoli presents her new recording of arias famously performed by legendary castrato, Farinelli.

Exploring the complex gender roles of the world of baroque opera, and highlighting the phenomenon of the castrati, a horrifying practice which led to some of the most celebrated work of the period.

Featuring works by Farinelli’s brother, Riccardo Broschi, and his mentor, Nicola Porpora, as well as Hasse, Caldara and Giacomelli. Including two new world premiere recordings, from Porpora’s Polifemo and Broschi’s La Merope.

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini HAYDN 2032 - NO. 7 GLI IMPRESARI

Under the title Gli impresari, The Impresarios – i.e. the directors of the theatre troupes that Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy engaged to perform in his opera houses – this CD gathers together some of the orchestral works by Joseph Haydn linked by their origin and their reception; they were originally conceived as theatre music, before their metamorphosis into symphonies(…). The period from 1772 onwards, when Karl Wahr was responsible for for the summer theatre programme at Esterháza, saw the peak of the multidisciplinary collaboration taking place between the court music directed by Haydn and companies engaged from outside. (…) At the end of 1775 and the beginning of 1776, while Joseph Haydn was occupied in transforming his music for Collé’s comedy into a symphony for concert performance, Karl Wahr was enjoying enormous success with his theatrical entertainments in the ballroom at the theatre in Salzburg. It was there, on 3 January 1776, that Thamos, King of Egypt was staged, a heroic drama whose choruses, musicologists now believe, were composed by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; for this Salzburg performance he also composed four instrumental entractes (recorded for this disc) as well as a melodrama and a Don Giovanni-esque descent into hell.

Sol Gabetta / Bertrand Chamayou / Giovanni Antonini / Kammerorchester Basel SCHUMANN

Schumann is the new album from the critically acclaimed, Grammy nominated cellist Sol Gabetta. This recording features a recording of Schumann’s cello concerto with the renowned Kammerorchester Basel under the direction of Giovanni Antonini. Sol Gabetta also teams up with the wonderful French pianist, Bertrand Chamayou to record Fantasy Pieces op. 73, the Adagio and Allegro op. 70 and the Five Pieces in Folk Style op. 102. 

Sol Gabetta has performed at many prestigious venues across the globe including Wigmore Hall in London, Lucerne, Verbier, Schwetzingen and Rheingau festivals, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg and Beethovenfest Bonn. Gabetta has received many awards including the Herbert von Karajan prize awarded at the Salzburg Easter Festival and the Gramophone Young Artist of the Year Award in 2010.

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini BEETHOVEN Symphony 9

It was astonishing, Debussy wrote in La Revue blanche on 1 May 1901, that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony had not been buried beneath the mass of prose that it had provoked: Debussy’s comment on Beethoven’s symphony is almost as famous as the work with which it deals. The tumultuous applause at the end of the first performance had barely died away before critics were already laying into the composer and his music. 

The final movement in particular gave rise to a debate that continues to reverberate to the present day. Is the deployment of the human voice a liberating blow struck in the name of the purely instrumental symphony? Is this final movement brilliantly inspired? Or was it a “blunder”, as the bold composer himself is reported to have said about this fourth and final movement?

Giovanni Antonini / Kammerorchester Basel HAYDN 2032 - No. 5 L'HOMME DE GÉNIE

Haydn2032, the ambitious project of recording the complete symphonies of Haydn, has been placed from the start under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini, with two ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico, which made the first four volumes, and the Kammerochester Basel, to which this fifth volume and the next two are assigned. Another characteristic of the edition is that each time Haydn is set in perspective with another composer; here it is Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-92): ‘Kraus was the first man of genius that I met. Why did he have to die? It is an irreparable loss for our art. The Symphony in C minor he wrote in Vienna specially for me is a work which will be considered a masterpiece in every century’, said Haydn in 1797. Though he long remained forgotten after his death, Kraus made an active contribution to the movement of poetic renewal called ‘Sturm und Drang’ or ‘Geniezeit’ (time of genius) because such artists as the young Goethe broke free of all tradition to follow their hearts alone. When Haydn called Kraus homme de génie, in French, he probably had this context in mind. The two composers had met in Vienna in 1783.

Giovanni Antonini / Kammerorchester Basel HAYDN 2032 - No. 6 LAMENTATIONE

The year 2017 was a vintage one for Giovanni Antonini: he was awarded an Echo Klassik, two Gramophone Awards and a Diapason d’Or of the Year for his recent releases. Two of these prizes distinguished Il Distratto, volume 4 of the complete recording of the Haydn symphonies on which he embarked for Alpha in 2014. For the sixth volume, released in 2018, the Milanese conductor is again joined by the Kammerorchester Basel, which shares the project with Il Giardino Armonico and which he knows very well, since he conducts it regularly and they have made many recordings together, including volume 5 of the Haydn series. This volume focuses on symphonies with a ‘sacred’ inspiration: the Symphony No.26, ‘Lamentatione’, was composed in 1768 for Holy Week, and no.30 was nicknamed ‘Alleluja’ after the plainchant melody Haydn uses in it. Symphony No.41 was written in 1769.

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 4 IL DISTRATTO

The fourth volume of the Haydn 2032 project thrusts into the limelight one of the most important stock characters in the theatre of sounds and words, the Kapellmeister, and explores some glamorous and (in)glorious moments in the career of Maestro Haydn. It features three symphonies by the ‘Shakespeare of Music’ – one of which is even associated with an actual play. This bears the title ‘Sinfonia in C. per la commedia intitolata Il distratto’ (the name of the play soon became the symphony’s nickname) and consists of an overture, four entr’actes, and a finale to be played at the end of the performance. Also on this disc is a large-scale buffo scene by his colleague Cimarosa. Il maestro di cappella is a witty and ironic parody, in which a member of the ‘old school’ of musicians tries to improve the ensemble playing of his orchestra. To his chagrin, the players do react, but in extremely undisciplined fashion: they are distracted, make false entries and disagree musically...

(from a text by Christian Moritz-Bauer)

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 3 SOLO E PENSOSO

Looking ahead to the 300th anniversary of the birth of Haydn in 2032, the Joseph Haydn Foundation of Basel has joined forces with the Alpha Classics label to record all of the composer’s 107 symphonies. This ambitious project is placed under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini, who now presents the third volume, after two previous issues that attracted great attention and received numerous awards, including the Echo Klassik Prize 2015 for the ‘best orchestral recording’ of the year.

Since he sees the music of Haydn as ‘a kaleidoscope of human emotions’, Giovanni Antonini has decided to approach the symphonies not chronologically, but thematically; the theme here is Haydn the philosopher. The Italian conductor has chosen in each of the programmes to make connections between the symphonies and other works. For this volume, he calls on the magnificent soprano Francesca Aspromonte to perform a number of arias including the famous ‘Solo e pensoso’. (Outhere Music)

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 2 IL FILOSOFO

For this second volume in the Haydn 2032 project, the complete recording of his symphonies, Giovanni Antonini has chosen to put forward the Symphony Der Philosoph. He associates with it a symphony by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, eldest son of the Kantor of Leipzig, who is generally considered the most gifted of his sons. Different reasons brought these two great composers the originality and sometimes eccentricity that characterize their works, one suffering from the fame of his father, the other from his own genius. Whereas Haydn’s symphonies differentiate themselves by form, orchestration and keys, W. F. Bach’s begins in the style of a Baroque overture, gradually turning into a tempestuous piece and perhaps already reflecting the transition from a ‘Golden Age’ to the more tormented world that will follow the Age of Enlightenment. (Outhere Music)

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 1 LA PASSIONE

Alpha & Giovanni Antonini embark on a new major project! 

Under the musical direction of Giovanni Antonini, the music project "Haydn2032" was created to realize a vision: to record and perform – in a unique cycle featuring concerts across Europe – all of Joseph Haydn's 107 symphonies by 2032, the 300th anniversary of the composer's birth. 

‘Symphony No. 49 is of dramatic inspiration, as is the finale of the 39th (with four horns!) in a fairly “Gluckist” style. We are at the beginnings of Sturm und Drang.

‘The first performance of Gluck’s ballet Don Juan, in Vienna in 1761, was an outstanding event in the development of dramatic expression in music. This was the first “modern” ballet, featuring dancers illustrating the story, not through a pre-established dance form (minuet, gavotte, etc.) but through free expression of their bodies.

‘I am truly captivated by the very strong correspondence existing in Gluck’s score between the story of Don Juan (the dancers’ movements) and the music, like a sort of little dictionary of musical gestures, with elements that are to be found in purely instrumental music of the period, including Haydn’s.

‘Yet it was in the 1760s (thus after the first performance of Gluck’s Don Juan) that Haydn began his first “dramatic” symphonies. ‘So I find it very interesting to bring together this piece by Gluck and these symphonies.’ (Giovanni Antonini)

Isabelle Faust / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Violin Concertos

The five most brilliant concertos for violin, all penned before the age of 19! Mozart was not even 15 years old when he began composing violin concertos that would serve as a backdrop at Salzburg receptions. An insatiable drive for independence would however lead the young Konzertmeister to overtly challenge musical forms, innovate with genres, humour and frivolity, all of which can be heard in this delightful first collaboration between Isabelle Faust and the musicians of Il Giardino Armonico.

“These wonderful performances have the air of chamber music, of close listening between soloist, band and director. Faust isn’t spotlit…but seems part of the ensemble, her sound growing out of the corporate entity to glitter, coax, snarl and soar as required…[a] thought-provoking and eminently enjoyable cycle” (Gramophone)

“Faust and Il Giardino Armonico bring out the shades of colour in the music and revelling in the characteristic phrases, but never forcing the issue. It goes without saying that Faust's tone is just as sweet here as in her other recordings, and she puts just the right amount of playful rubato into the cadenzas without straying into self-indulgence.” (Presto Classical)